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Game for Boys or Girls

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Game for Boys or Girls
Jenkins essay “‘Complete Freedom of Movement’: Video Games as Gendered Play Space” convinced me that 13 years ago there was gender segregation in the digital world of video games on who the games where made for, girls or boys. From my 15 year of experience playing hundreds of video games I never thought of games being gender biased till now. To me girls didn’t play them because they were just not into video games and would rather play with dolls. Jenkins states that traditional culture in video games is not fixing gender bias games but rather making the gender segregation stay (p. 713). Jenkins main claim is that pop culture is reinforcing conventional categories of gender and that the division between boys and girls needs to stop. Jenkins essay was shocking and opened my eyes into what the world of video games once was, and demonstrated that game designers were creating protagonist in video games separated male and female: For example the girl protagonist is into the domestic world and boy is being adventurous and free. But is the gender segregation still happening today, after 13 years? As time has pass I believe that pop culture and gaming companies are more aware of the gender segregation and know that because of the segregation boy don’t have a strong emotional development and girls are restricted their imagination and the female freedom out of the domestic world.
The video games companies understand the importance of gender segregation in their games because girls were being affected by their ignorance 13 years ago. Female video games trapped them in their traditional roles: a world of domesticities, emotion, caring and a repetitive world with limitations of adventure. According to Jenkins “Girls need to learn how to explore ‘unsafe’ and ‘unfriendly’ spaces, and to experience the ‘complete freedom of movement’… to help them develop the self-confidence and competitiveness demanded for a professional women. (p. 725)” The bias video game companies are


Cited: Henry Jenkins. “’Complete Freedom of Movement’: Video Games as Gendered Play Space”. Massachusetts Institute of Technology. MIT Press. 2011. Print Melissa Karnaze. “Boys Lack Emotional Intelligence Training” 2008 - 2011 Mindful Construct Media. 2011. Web
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